Reopening of the Focus "Towards a new “aesthetics of war”? Is Polemos still father of all things? -"
2023-07-22
Dear Colleagues and Friends of Aisthesis,
I hereby inform you that the deadline relating to the Focus on war has been reopened. The theme of the Focus will be the main topic of the second issue of 2023 These are the new dates:
deadline: 20 October 2023
expected release: end of december 2023.
New contributions in English, French or Italian are welcome!
The Focus will consider the following topics:
- War also brings with it a reconfiguration between different disciplines, altering their relative
relationships: which relationships have undergone the greatest transformations? What are the
underlying dynamics, at the level of the deep interweaving that characterizes the various forms
of knowledge, that war has helped to bring to the surface?
- In the course of a war, such steady demarcations as the boundaries between one state and
another are subjected to great pressure and constant fluctuations. The armed confrontation
seems to prompt - also on a philosophical level - new reflections on the role of the “border”,
partly evoking also the Kantian polarity between Grenze and Schranke.
- In light of this fluctuation of the geopolitical notion of boundary at the core of which lies the
Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine, could we argue that the very borders between
the conceptual domains of ethics and politics, as well as those between politics and aesthetics,
have become fluctuant?
- War is also a war of propaganda: “war images” today play such a strategic role in
communication that they can strengthen or undermine the very figure and reputation of the
parties involved. It is a question here of a genuine redefinition and in particular a decisive
broadening of the semantic field referred to by the term “aesthetics of war”.
- To what extent does the current aestheticization of war, which cuts across the very ethicalpolitical
distinction between aggressor and aggressed, mark a caesura with respect to the
aestheticization of modern or post-modern politics? Or is it still a continuity to be thought of in
a more radical way? That continuity which presupposes, as Benjamin definitively grasped, that
humanity - in the silence of the ancient gods - has made a spectacle of itself.
I hereby inform you that the deadline relating to the Focus on war has been reopened. The theme of the Focus will be the main topic of the second issue of 2023 These are the new dates:
deadline: 20 October 2023
expected release: end of december 2023.
New contributions in English, French or Italian are welcome!
The Focus will consider the following topics:
- War also brings with it a reconfiguration between different disciplines, altering their relative
relationships: which relationships have undergone the greatest transformations? What are the
underlying dynamics, at the level of the deep interweaving that characterizes the various forms
of knowledge, that war has helped to bring to the surface?
- In the course of a war, such steady demarcations as the boundaries between one state and
another are subjected to great pressure and constant fluctuations. The armed confrontation
seems to prompt - also on a philosophical level - new reflections on the role of the “border”,
partly evoking also the Kantian polarity between Grenze and Schranke.
- In light of this fluctuation of the geopolitical notion of boundary at the core of which lies the
Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine, could we argue that the very borders between
the conceptual domains of ethics and politics, as well as those between politics and aesthetics,
have become fluctuant?
- War is also a war of propaganda: “war images” today play such a strategic role in
communication that they can strengthen or undermine the very figure and reputation of the
parties involved. It is a question here of a genuine redefinition and in particular a decisive
broadening of the semantic field referred to by the term “aesthetics of war”.
- To what extent does the current aestheticization of war, which cuts across the very ethicalpolitical
distinction between aggressor and aggressed, mark a caesura with respect to the
aestheticization of modern or post-modern politics? Or is it still a continuity to be thought of in
a more radical way? That continuity which presupposes, as Benjamin definitively grasped, that
humanity - in the silence of the ancient gods - has made a spectacle of itself.